From Modern Mythcraft to Magical Surrealism

In This Issue: Sept. 2011 (Issue 54)

Welcome to issue fifty-three of Fantasy Magazine! Here’s what we’ve got on tap this month … Fiction: “Lessons from a Clockwork Queen” by Megan Arkenberg, “Using It and Losing It” by Jonathan Lethem, “The Nymph’s Child” by Carrie Vaughn, “Three Damnations: A Fugue” by James Alan Gardner. Nonfiction: “Steampunk and the Architecture of Idealism” by David Brothers, “The Language of Fantasy” by David Salo, “Ten Reasons To Be a Pirate” by John Baur and Mark Summers, “Feature Interview: Brandon Sanderson” by Leigh Butler.

Jennifer Mei’s work displays a sense of both grace and whimsy. She paints and draws characters inspired by and drawn from a number of video games, as well as naturalistic pieces with a loose feel. Her subjects range from fantasy stalwarts like dragons and warriors to apple-shaped buildings and flying whales. Her cover piece for […]

She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen’s throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore.

As the story went through revisions, I reworked some of the lessons (and sometimes changed them back again!) to be sillier and less predictable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was tempting to fall back on “true love conquers all.”

Steampunk as a genre is about traversing the edge of that level of technology. Characters have weapons and gadgets that are conceptually similar to things we have in the modern day, but work in entirely different ways.

Pratt walked the distance to work, stopped in at his accustomed cigar store to buy cigarettes, and rode the elevator upstairs to his office; in short, his standard routine, without deviation—yet it didn’t feel right.

Quenya, Tsolyáni, Láadan, Klingon, Kesh, Na’vi, Dothraki … this is not a magic spell, nor a litany from some ancient prayer book, but just a few just a few of the invented languages that have made it into print or onto the screen.

She’d sail off the edge of the world with him. She very nearly had, that time through the Iron Teeth. This was simply another journey, and it would be over soon. Rope around her neck, a moment of fear, then nothing.

From the Editor

I wanted to start with the idea of the origin story. Every writer has one, and it’s always interesting to hear how writers of color navigated the choppy waters of reading fantasy early on and then deciding to write it. I remember searching for myself, in that languageless sort of way we do when we’re young and don’t know the larger meaning of our search.